09.10.05 - Saturday Training

New Items Today:

1. Guest: Nick

Reviewed Other Items:

1. Kick: Roundhouse Kicks
2. Technique: Thunder & Lightning
3. Technique: Escaping Ram
4. Form: Orange Belt Form
5. ¼ Speed Sparring
6. ¾ - Full Speed Sparring

Nick is a Guest with Us for the Day
A college student named Nick joined our workout today. His background is American Kenpo but I suspect he may have had some training in another discipline. He wore a level of brown belt and was afforded the recognition deserved for his rank in class. He has an invitation to spar with us any time but at this point it doesn’t appear that he is going to become a student of TKI.

Thunder & Lighting and Escaping Ram
We practiced these techniques today with the purple belts rotating out so we could practice with different perspectives for different people. I had a lot of feedback from Walt and Alex and jotted it down for my Technical Journal. I think I’m improving in the techniques but it still isn’t perfect yet. My biggest issue with Thunder & Lightning is that I tend to move more to the 8:00 position (laterally) instead of to the 7:30 (45 degrees) off the line of attack. I’m not sure why I keep doing that, but need to practice more. With Escaping Ram, I had a lot more feedback regarding the snap in the arms, position of arms while kicking, measuring the gap and when to look when making the adjustment step. It was a great practice session and I learned a lot.

Orange Belt Form
My movements within the form are getting better with practice but Bill suggested that I focus on shooting the blocks with more accuracy and put some ‘snap’ into them. I’ll work on it.

¼ Speed Sparring
I was able to spar with several of the guys, including our guest, Nick. I actually had a pretty cool take-down on Walt because I caught him while he was showboating a little bit. There were some specific things I learned from each of the guys though and made notes this time:
Walt: I was experimenting more with combos this time. Walt was covering pretty good and we discussed at one point that I needed to look at creating openings and not just waiting for them to happen on their own as a good fighter may never give you those kinds of gifts. The obvious always seems that way when you put it in print.

Nick: Sparring with Nick was more reminiscent of the sparring classes in Taekwondo than in Kenpo. Nick has longer legs and likes to kick. After noting this pretty quickly, I tried to crowd him to keep those feet on the ground, a tactic that was at least partially successful. Nick connected more often on me with kicks and I did better against him with punches, knees & elbows. He is accurate with his kicks and got them inside on me at times even when I thought I had him covered. Nick also seemed to adapt fairly well as he responded well when I moved in from the side. The times I did best on him was when I stepped inside a high kick and took him off his center.

Phyl: I had to defend low move to the side a lot today with Phyl. He seemed more aggressive and more linear than he usually is. Often times we clashed with footwork and had a tendency to get tied up. I don’t know that there was anything very pretty about our sparring session this time. There were a few times that he grabbed my gi and waited for me to come in. He caught me on the first one, but that was it. For the most part, all I felt I could do when he came in with some of the combinations was retreat, but when I was able to get inside, I did okay.

Alex: Still had problems with Alex. He is a tight little ball of protection when he is sparring and I just had a tough time with it. I finally said something about it as he was mostly waiting for me to advance on him. At this point we discussed creating openings again and he gave me some examples. He also showed me some basic but effective pressure points that just cause annoying pain when you can’t get to anything else. He and Phyl have both driven a knuckle in the back of my hand when I wasn’t in proper position but Alex took it further and showed several pressure points along the upper and lower arm. Although these aren’t critical targets, they can wear an opponent down or cause them to lower their defenses temporarily, thus creating openings for more critical strikes.

Bill: I didn’t spar against Bill this time but he walked around and gave some critiques to everyone. He mentioned to me to lift my head. He explained that this will help increase my peripheral vision and allow me to see more of what might be coming at me!

¾ - Full Speed Sparring
Bill, Nick, and the purple belts put their gear on and did some additional sparring. They took turns rotating in and out, each doing a 2 minute round with 2 different opponents. Unfortunately, Walt re-injured his shoulder and was sidelined in the middle of his first round. The other guys went on though and it was interesting to watch the guys act and react to Nick and his style of fighting. Everyone did well and it was fun to watch.